Development Property Cambridgeshire Peterborough Housing Crisis

Mayor James Palmer says only boldness and ambition can help solve Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s “immoral” housing crisis.

He gave a keynote address at the Cambridge Development Plans 2018 event last month (September), where he outlined the scale of the problem, suggesting current housebuilding rates in his Combined Authority area needed to roughly double to 6,000-8,000 units per year.

Mayor Palmer pointed to recent figures in a new economic study suggesting that the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough economy was growing a percentage point faster than official government figures suggest. But the final report of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Economic Review (CPIER), chaired by economist Dame Kate Barker, identified the housing crisis as a serious threat to that continued growth.
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Mayor Palmer said: “We have situation in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough where people are being forced to live further and further away from the places where they work and grew up. People who have lived in areas for generations and have family and social connections are simply forced out: “Hospitals and schools are struggling to recruit because the cost of living is too high. This is not just a problem in central Cambridge, it goes much wider, and this displacement cycle of people being pushed further from where they want to live as housing becomes progressively less affordable needs to be tackled with urgency. As I see it, the situation is immoral and it is clear that the current status quo of housing delivery, of all types, just isn’t working. It isn’t delivering nearly enough homes, nor is it delivering the range of housing types and tenures required by people in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.”

He added: “That must mean a fresh approach is needed, but we need Government and local authorities to really show that ambition and boldness to be prepared to tackle the housing crisis in new ways.”

Last month a new housing strategy was approved by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority that will take a fresh, bold and ambitious approach to delivering homes. The housing strategy will help guide the Combined Authority to meeting its ambition to build 100,000 additional homes and 40,000 affordable homes by 2037 and help to address the affordability of housing, particularly for key workers, first time buyers and those in low and medium paid employment who cannot easily afford a home without family or other third-party support. 

Schemes such as Community Land Trusts (CLTs), discounted market homes priced at £100,000 at first sale and mechanisms such as Land Value Capture (LVC), are all designed to bring new direction and innovation into tackling the area’s housing problems. Also approved in the strategy is the creation of a £40 million housing fund that will enable such innovative developments to come forward, with specific focus on schemes that can be delivered through loan funding that will be repaid to the Combined Authority, when complete, to use on other schemes. This revolving fund can then be used to unlock a potentially limitless amount of housing, and offers a significant change of approach to conventional local authority schemes such as one-off grants to housing associations for a fixed amount of homes.

Mayor Palmer said new homes need to be built to both the highest design and environmental standards, and that one-off incremental additions to existing settlements are simply not sustainable: ”Housing on the edge of villages is not going to do the job and provide the necessary infrastructure. We already have a road system operating above capacity and a shaky train network. Infrastructure has to come before housing – it is the only way to make more homes sustainable. If anywhere is to show that we can deliver world class infrastructure, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has to be the place. We are the leaders in so many areas, but we are miles behind on our infrastructure.”

Mayor Palmer said he is working with the government and investors to progress his plans for a Cambridgeshire Metro, with underground tunnelling in the city centre, enabling housing to be brought forward, including through new garden villages: “The Cambridgeshire Metro is a long term, sustainable, world class public transport solution that will not only connect people reliably, conveniently and affordably, but will also unlock the housing we need, including through new garden villages, to address the housing crisis,” he said.

 

Mayor James Palmer is set to join us at the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Economic Growth Conference
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